Gender Gap Narrows for Women Business Owners

Women entrepreneurs have helped fuel the economic recovery, and female-owned businesses have grown at a rate five times the national average over the last nine years, according to The 2016 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report. They now generate more than $1.6 trillion in revenue.

While women-owned businesses have experienced recent success, they still trail their male counterparts in key financial categories: average annual revenues and earnings, credit scores and average loan size.

However, this disparity between the financials of men- and women-owned businesses is noticeably decreasing. In recent years, the federal government has backed a number of initiatives designed to encourage women’s entrepreneurship, and many of the programs are beginning to reap the fruits of their labor. For instance, last year, for the first time ever, the government awarded at least 5 percent of its contracts to women-owned businesses.

Men-owned companies are still awarded the lion’s share, and that percentage isn’t coming close to equal anytime soon for government contracts. However, with every little bit of progress that is made, there offers more encouragement.

Small Business Trends founder and CEO Anita Campbell and I will be hosting the free webinar on Wednesday, March 8 (International Women’s Day) from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST addressing the most common issues women entrepreneurs face in business ownership. We will delve into the results of Biz2Credit’s annual report on the State of Women-Owned Business, which examined the financial situations of 25,000 companies.

Additionally, the webinar will provide advice for women to improve their financial situations and grow their companies. On the panel will be Dawn Fotopulos, author of Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners, which was honored by the Small Business Trends Small Business Book Awards — Economics 2015. Also joining us will be Moji Rotibi, who has worked with many women business owners globally.

The one-hour webinar will also feature a panel of experts that will discuss:

Understanding cash flow and how keep a lot more of the money you make

Accounting skills that women business owners should have

Developing business leadership skills

The importance of personal branding for women entrepreneurs

Growth of women-owned businesses in 2016, projections for 2017

The gender gap and types of funding available for women business owners

Ways to improve business credit scores and other topics related to small business growth

Rohit Arora, CEO and Co-founder of Biz2Credit, is one of the country's leading experts in small business finance. Since its founding in 2007, Biz2Credit has arranged $800M in small business loans and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs. Rohit was named Crain's NY Business "Entrepreneur of the Year 2011."

2 Reactions

I’m so glad to see that the federal government has backed a number of initiatives designed to encourage women’s entrepreneurship, and many of the programs are beginning to reap the fruits of their labor!

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